SearchIndexer.exe Running at 100% CPU

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Guest

Hi all, (this one I feel is for microsoft directly)

I recently had a problem where outlook2007 crashed on searching for an email
by sender name.

Everytime I now start outlook, SearchIndexer.exe runs as 100% killing my pc
performance obviously.

I myself work in IT support and am very aware of support techniques to
investigate, yet I am at a loss for this one.

If i killed the process, it comes back.
If i leave the process running overnight for more than 12 hours, it still
never completes doing whatever it thinks its doing.

I guessed it was trying to perform an indexing routine for the first time,
yet I would have expected it to complete withing a couple of hours max
considering its a brand new pc and installation of vista.

Also, restoring back to previous restore points doesn't resolve the issue.

I have seen 1 or 2 other people experience the same problem and they have
had discussions with MS supprort to resolve the issue, but no solution issued
yet as far as I can see.

Any suggestions welcome here.
Next step is to call MS or reinstall Vista I guess. In that case, i'll go
back to XP!
Thanks

Immy
 
Immy,

- If you right-click on the SearchIndexer.exe process while it is using 100%
CPU you should be able to create a mini-dump file. If you can get that dump
file to me { (e-mail address removed) } I can do some debugging and try and
diagnose the problem.

- I would also double-check that it isn't still indexing e-mail - open the
Indexing Options Control Panel and see what status is reported and whether
the number of indexed items is increasing. I would have thought 12 hours
would

- Ultimately you can reset your index {Restore Defaults} in the indexing
control panel, although if possible I'd like to debug this first ...

Dave Wood
 
Hi Dave,

thanks for the response.
I'll produce the mini dump and send to you.
Just a few other things to be aware of...

1. Reinstalling Office didnt help
2. It appears that SearchIndexer.exe is not hitting 100% without opening
outlook.
3. I ran a full chkdsk /f

None of the above helped so I stopped the windows search service.
I'll start it all up now and sen the log file to you.

Thanks
Immy
 
Dave Wood said:
Immy,

- If you right-click on the SearchIndexer.exe process while it is using
100% CPU you should be able to create a mini-dump file. If you can get
that dump file to me { (e-mail address removed) } I can do some debugging
and try and diagnose the problem.

- I would also double-check that it isn't still indexing e-mail - open the
Indexing Options Control Panel and see what status is reported and whether
the number of indexed items is increasing. I would have thought 12 hours
would

- Ultimately you can reset your index {Restore Defaults} in the indexing
control panel, although if possible I'd like to debug this first ...

Dave Wood
Click to expand...



Hi Dave

This seems an interesting new option in Task Manager. Hadn't spotted that
before.

Would WinDbg be the tool of choice to analyze those dumps? I've downloaded
the latest WinDbg and noticed a few tutorials in the documentation that seem
related to examining hanging applications.

If so, is there a particular command(s) in Windbg that would reveal more
than others when it comes to troubleshooting any high cpu processes? Thanks
for any hints.
 
I have just experienced the same problem.

After reading these messages I experimented with opening and closing
Outlook. Opening starts SearchIndexer; closing stops it. While
SearchIndexer is running CPU usage goes to 100% and slows everythng
else down. I have Indexing turned off.

Hope Dave comes up with a solution :-)

Martin
 
Here a few quick pointers:

You can get the debuggers, including windbg from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx . There's a
fairly good help file debuggers.chm.

Windbg -z <dumpfile> will load a dump file. Previously you could do this by
attaching to the process with a debugger, but this option in Vista does make
it a bit easier.

As for debugging, it depends a lot if the process is hung / stuck in an
infinite CPU loop, or just taking a long time to do what it needs to do. The
command "!runaway" will show which thread is using the most CPU, which can
be a help. The command "~*k" shows the thread stacks for all threads.

If you can get accurate symbols then that can help. I believe you can point
your symbol path to the Microsoft symbol server with a command like this:
".sympath SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols",
followed by ".reload". Or the link above has downloadable symbol packages.

Often, just looking for which dlls are on the call stacks can be a big clue.
This often happens when debugging explorer or iexplore issues which often
turn out to be some third party plug-in / context menu handler etc.

Dave
 
That's perfect. Thanks alot Dave :-)

--
Jon


Dave Wood said:
Here a few quick pointers:

You can get the debuggers, including windbg from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx . There's
a fairly good help file debuggers.chm.

Windbg -z <dumpfile> will load a dump file. Previously you could do this
by attaching to the process with a debugger, but this option in Vista does
make it a bit easier.

As for debugging, it depends a lot if the process is hung / stuck in an
infinite CPU loop, or just taking a long time to do what it needs to do.
The command "!runaway" will show which thread is using the most CPU, which
can be a help. The command "~*k" shows the thread stacks for all threads.

If you can get accurate symbols then that can help. I believe you can
point your symbol path to the Microsoft symbol server with a command like
this: ".sympath
SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols", followed by
".reload". Or the link above has downloadable symbol packages.

Often, just looking for which dlls are on the call stacks can be a big
clue. This often happens when debugging explorer or iexplore issues which
often turn out to be some third party plug-in / context menu handler etc.

Dave
Click to expand...
 
Are you sure it is SearchIndexer.exe that is behaving this way? It should be
running all the time unless you stop or disable the search service.
Instances of SearchProtocolHost.exe will start and stop as required.

When you say you have Indexing turned off, what do you mean by that?

Can you take a look at the Problem Reports and Solutions and the Event
Viewer and see if there is anything related to these processes in there? I'm
not exactly sure what is happening here ...

Dave
 
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